- "History is a very valuable topic to today's society."
- "The wheel should never have been invented in order to benefit society."
- "Thousands of people would strew together creating uncertainty and disorder."
- "Without the wheel, all of mankind would have been and would be vastly effected."
- "The industrial revolution began with the invention of the wheel in 15th century Europe."
Friday, April 04, 2008
Something is wrong with secondary education in the U.S.
Every year I volunteer to grade essays for a scholarship competition. I look for essay topics outside my area of expertise, just to spice up my life a little. This year I drew "History." The students were asked to describe what life would be like today if something critical to modern society had never been invented. Something like, say, the wheel. Here is a little sample of what the kids had to say:
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28 comments:
It really is disturbing. This being my first year as a prof I've been wondering if I'm horrible at teaching or if the students just aren't smart. I'm feeling less and less guilty about shifting the blame more in their direction. So thanks for sharing.
As a history professor, I don't know whether to laugh or cry, but I certainly see this all the time! I read the AP European history exams, and I've been doing it for about a decade. There has been a noticeable decline in the quality of the essays we see, because students don't get taught to think. And they believe that if they just *state* something, we have to accept it! Of course, given that we have politicians who think that, maybe it isn't too surprising. Either way, I seem to spend most of my time in my survey classes undoing whatever they learned in high school!
Barb
I'm not a professional educator, but I have to think that the emphasis on passing multiple choice tests every year has destroyed the ability of students to synthesize ideas of there own. If its not information fed to them to be puked up all over a test paper in exactly the same form it doesn't matter. I remember in my US history class being taught how to write essay answers to different types of questions that served me well all through college. It wasn't THAT long ago.
No child will be left behind if none of 'em go anywhere...
I tend to agree that the shift to standardized testing and "accountability initiatives" are a big part of this.
But I also think that there's a broader component about intellectual risk taking that is not being taught because secondary teachers aren't even allowed to employ it. The greater the oversight from above, the less willing and able teachers are to create any kind of intellectual excitement in the classroom. Students think in platitudes because their teachers are teaching in platitudes, which is frequently all that's been approved by the school district.
Kids aren't dumber in and of themselves, but as other commenters above have noted they don't know how to think for themselves, or even be willing to be out-and-out wrong. So they say such stupidly obvious things that they might as well not say them at all.
A few weeks ago, GPop and I went to an academic fair at Son's school. We saw stuff of a similar quality, but this was output of seventh graders, not eleventh or twelfth graders. At least it seems that their spell checkers work. "Effected" is a word, albeit not the right one. Likewise "strew."
"Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning."
As for No Child Left Behind, well, a receeding tide lowers all boats equally.
My senior year at a college prep school, my English teacher decided none of us could write a good paragraph, and therefore kept making us write them as exercises over and over. I'm rather grateful now.
When I started college, I wrote a "recipe" for a standard 5-paragraph essay, and said that I guaranteed that if you followed every step of the recipe, your essay would get an A. Some students were thrilled -- they didn't mind working hard and were simply glad to find out they could control whether they got a good grade or not. Other students loved the idea of the guarantee, but complained following all the steps was "too hard." I said I guaranteed an A, not an easy A. The recipe was simply a way to understand that if you really wanted to make the effort, you could write an A-quality essay every time. I recently ran across it again, and realized that today's undergrads would consider it far too demanding.
I am teaching a sophomore course in writing, which has a theme: "Writing Race."
I had the students read an essay on U.S. Latinos and then, as homework, write a response paper on the question, "What is 'Latino'"? Instructions were to take into consideration what the essay said, use critical / analytical thinking etc., and come up with a thoughtful response.
Only 1 out of 25 students did *not* simply choose and repeat the one sentence they thought was the key one (in the essay they read).
I blame No Child Left Behind.
As someone who tutors kids, I feel your pain.
I have to agree with Mike. My mom is a teacher and absolutely hates that she has to teach to tests. Also, since the fed. exams don't include science she's the only teacher who teaches it in her building.
And these cretins will be wiping our senile behinds one day.
I got an essay the other day that said, "Republicans have an easier time raising funds, which makes them good in champaign."
Alas, you know someone somewhere is crowing about a tax break.
Let's not start bashing the high schools, which most of us have never taught at. It's not like the teachers there are teaching them to "not think." Most teachers are trying damn hard to get their kids to think.
In my personal opinion the biggest problem is that people aren't reading for fun. This has a much wider blame than the public school system.
Horace: You are right on.
Helen: I'd love to see your "steps to an A" sheet. I'll post on portfolio methods of writing if you'll post on that. :-)
And AP, I see this kind of stuff all the time, too, grading the essay portion of the Georgia Regents' Exam. This is Generation WTF, no doubt.
most recent anonymous: I only see bashing of the inane standards high school teachers have to attempt to meet. Where in any of these comments do you see anyone bashing the teachers themselves?
Makes me wish I'd applied for more scholarships. I always assumed there must be tons of other kids who could write just as well but who would really have an interest in the subject material.
can i just say, you guys are FUCKED! your next generation, literally, does not possess enough brainpower to fend for themselves, let alone run a country. good luck with all that.
A lot of people in the comments are faulting NCLB for this kind of thing, and they may have a point. But I would like to see someone address the issue behind NCLB.
As people like Andy Rotherham and others have noted, we seem to lurch back and forth between a focus on equity and one on excellence. NCLB is a pure equity play: make sure all kids receive a minimal level of education, and as might be expected, the minimum bar actually becomes a ceiling.
I'm all for promoting excellence, but there are a lot of kids who get left behind in those types of efforts. If we want high achievement, we have to focus our limited resources on the ones who can achieve highly, and that takes our efforts away from those who can't.
So what's the solution? Equity, which focuses on making sure every child gets to a certain (low) level, or excellence, which will create more students who can perform at a higher level, while hiding other students in the shadows?
My guess is the conversation went like this:
"Hey, I got an idea. We've lost thousands of good jobs in this country because of NAFTA and other bad policies. Meanwhile, our service sector is exploding. Why bother teaching kids skills they won't be able to use when they graduate? Let's dumb down the populace so we can have a bigger, less educated working class! Then they'll be more obedient and easier to control!"
"Great idea! Are you a Republican?"
Brett, why not try for a balance between both. Obviously that's much harder to achieve and our elected officials are generally not comfortable with multi-chotomous solutions, but I think it's possible to get all citizens up to a basic level while still providing opportunities to those who have the aptitude.
"If we want high achievement, we have to focus our limited resources on the ones who can achieve highly, and that takes our efforts away from those who can't."
It's not a zero-sum proposition, and the problem is not testing or NCLB. Kids can't write and don't know history because they were not taught. Shifting bad teaching and curricula resources from one group to another is not the solution. Schools love to claim that everything is a money issue.
NCLB at least forces a minimal amount of accountability on schools, but unfortunately, this minimum becomes the maximum in many cases. It legalizes low expectations. High SES parents know this and make up for it with tutoring or help at home. The academic gap will continue.
As for those who don't like NCLB testing, look at how simple the questions are. What other knowledge or skills make it OK to flunk these tests? Good schools laugh at these tests. The solution is not to get rid of NCLB, but to do a whole lot more.
NCLB was spearheaded by a woman with a BA in politics, who GWB took a shine too, back when she was just a lobbyist. Essentially, a lobbyist (Margaret Spellings) is the head of educational standards in this country. So you tell me - why isn't an educator in charge of the Department of Education? What gives a random adult with a BA the power to decide how children are educated in this country?
NCLB is a nightmare for teachers, for parents, for students. And you know MS wants to bring a version of it to higher education, after lamenting publically about how hard it was to find a college for her daughter, because there was no standardization of colleges to make the comparisons easier.
Frankly, I am grateful that kids come out of high school knowing how to read, given the state of the D of E these days. Well, they can read if their school hasn't given them the boot for made-up offenses in order to rid the school of students likely to score lower on those standardized tests.
Liz here to make an apology. I wrote the post at Kitchen Table Math based on this post.
I didn't make it sufficiently clear that KTM readers should come over here and read the comments.
I've fixed that with an update.
"What gives a random adult with a BA the power to decide how children are educated in this country?"
What gives someone with an ed school degree the knowledge to define content, assumptions, and expectations for my son?
Nothing is stopping schools from doing more. In our state, teachers are the ones who define and calibrate the state tests, and only 22% of 11th graders meet minimum proficiency cut-offs in math. How is that the fault of NCLB or DOE?
"NCLB is a nightmare for teachers, for parents, for students."
Who says it's a nightmare for parents or students? It's a nightmare for teachers because they just want to be left alone. The problem with education is not the problems teachers face when kids walk into their classroom. Problems can't be viewed from the teacher's perspective. I can sympathize with a fifth grade teacher if kids come into class struggling with adding 7+8 and teachers have to prepare them for testing. This is the teacher's problem, not the problem with education. The problem is why did that child get to fifth grade in the first place. What bad curricula, teaching methods, and standards allowed that to happen?
My son got an average grade on our state's trivial reading comprehension test section and it turns out that the school NEVER practices the fundamental skill of reading short passages and answering questions. If someone thinks this is teaching to the test, then I don't want them anywhere near my son. Apparently, our school is taking a very indirect path to this skill via posters, dioramas, and artifacts. It isn't working. NCLB isn't my nightmare. It's the school.
NCLB is the messenger. It's only (big!) problem is that the minimum cut-offs are way too low and they become the maximum targets for many schools, and some schools shift resources and ask for more money rather than fix underlying problems. NCLB might not leave any child behind, but it will never eliminate the academic gap. You can't legislate individual educational opportunity via NCLB. You have to allow full school choice.
Let schools do what they want, but let parents decide to send their kids (and the money) somewhere else.
I am grateful that kids come out of high school knowing how to read, if their school hasn't given them the boot for made-up offenses in order to rid the school of students likely to score lower on those standardized tests.
Not in Baltimore. Here, kids as young as the 4th grade regularly assault teachers with impunity, much less getting expelled.
In the latest incident, the principal blamed the teacher for using a code word which triggered the attack (and no, it wasn't the N word). She said she would defend herself if the student didn't step back and take her seat.
Only 1/3 of Baltimore City students graduate high school.
Pedants. You think I will not strew constringent objects to see how you are effected? Then we will see if you is smartiepants!
ps. I teach med school and the students are very resistant to problem-solving.
pps. I can't tell if this comment has been submitted 50 times or not at all. I am also ignorant in many things!
Such an essay could be a lot of fun to do well, but schools seems to discourage the already small minority of students who would be interested in such a thing from putting any effort into it.
Wheels are especially interesting because, surprisingly, numerous cultures discovered the wheel and then pretty much abandoned them later upon realising beasts of burden could do the job better. (Until they invented carts, I'd guess; I'm no anthropologist.)
History is a very valuable topic to today's society. Sadly, by saying that in my history essay, I'll probably win points with my history teacher, even though my essay is a load of crap and that statement is irrelevant to my topic.
I teach high school, and believe me, those sentences are among the better ones I see. One student wrote "well, in this lab, I was sposed to find the hypotenuse of a chemical bond I think." And I could read that one. I feel like banging my head against the wall every time I grade papers. I spend vast amounts of time making comments, and nothing makes me quite as mad as when I see lab reports in the trash the day I hand them back. Except maybe when they beg for extra credit on the last day of the term.
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